Technologies
Xbox Game Pass Subscribers Can Play Assassin’s Creed Mirage Now
Microsoft also brought on a few more games to Game Pass Standard.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise is one of the biggest series in gaming today. Ubisoft, the publisher of the series, said in 2023 that it has sold more than 155 million copies of Assassin’s Creed games, making it one of the bestselling franchises in history. And Xbox Game Pass subscribers can play one of the most recent entries in the series, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, right now.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a CNET Editors Choice award pick, offers hundreds of games you can play on your Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One and PC or mobile device for $20 a month. A subscription gives you access to a large library of games, with new ones, like Doom: The Dark Ages, added monthly, plus other benefits such as online multiplayer and deals on non-Game Pass titles.
Here are the games Microsoft is bringing to Game Pass in August. You can also check out other games the company added to the service in July, including early access to Grounded 2.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can play now.
Travel back in time to 9th century Baghdad in this 2023 installment of the popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. You play as Basim, a cunning street thief who joins an ancient organization known as the Hidden Ones. Through this organization, you’ll become a deadly master assassin and change the course of the world.
Rain World
Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass Standard subscribers can play now.
In this survival platformer, you’re a slugcat — both adorable and dangerous — in a broken ecosystem filled with overgrown plants and industrial waste. You have to survive in this world with nothing but your wits and trusty spear. But there are larger enemies out there who think you look like their next meal, so watch your step.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
New to Game Pass Standard.
Game Pass Standard subscribers can now join the fun of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, a few months after Microsoft brought this title to Game Pass Ultimate. This sequel to one of 2022’s most popular RPGs launches on Game Pass on Day 1. You play as a sleeper, an emulated human mind in an artificial body, as you try to outrun the corporation that made you and the gang that wants to control you. You’ll commandeer a ship, recruit a crew and take on contracts as you try to build a better future for yourself in this dice-driven sci-fi game.
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
New to Game Pass Standard.
Get ready to fall down over and over again as you learn to master the snowy terrain in Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders. This is the sequel to Lonely Mountains: Downhill, but up to eight players can join cross-platform multiplayer matches, so you and your block-headed friends can enjoy the fresh powder together. That doesn’t sound lonely at all.
MechWarrior 5: Clans
New to Game Pass Standard.
Game Pass Ultimate subscribers could play MechWarrior 5: Clans in November, and Game Pass Standard subscribers can now play it as well. Step into a towering mech and battle your way across the galaxy in this latest installment of the MechWarrior series. Your territory is being invaded in this game, and you lead a squad of five other mech pilots to turn the invasion back. But this is no run-and-gun game. You’ll have to coordinate your moves with other units to create the perfect opportunities to attack.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap
New to Game Pass Standard.
The orcs are back in the latest entry in this tower-defense series, but your goal remains the same: Kill every last one of them. Each hero in this game has their own unique play style, so pick the one most fun for you. And team up with others in four-player co-op to obliterate the chaotic cartoonish hordes. Microsoft brought this title to Game Pass Ultimate subscribers in February, and Game Pass Standard subscribers can get in on all the orc-smashing fun now.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite
Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass Standard subscribers can play on Aug. 12.
Microsoft is bringing this game back to Game Pass after removing it from the service in December 2022. In this survival shooter, you join an elite team of hardened marines as they fight through hordes of xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. You can customize your character and gear as you take on the ever-evolving threat and try to stop it from spreading.
9 Kings (game preview)
Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers can play on Aug. 14.
This game takes kingdom builders, deck builders and roguelikes and smashes them together to make something new. You’ll build your kingdom from a humble village to a huge citadel, but you’ll also have to defend your realm from other rulers. So you can use knights, warlocks, sentient mushrooms and more in major battles to fend off others. And you can loot your enemy’s deck to grow your empire and become the King of Kings.
These games are leaving Game Pass on Aug. 15
While Microsoft is adding those games to Game Pass soon, the company is also removing a few others from the service on Aug. 15. So you still have some time to finish any campaigns or sidequests before you have to buy these games separately.
For more on Xbox, discover other games available on Game Pass now, read our hands-on review of the gaming service and learn which Game Pass plan is right for you. You can also check out what to know about upcoming Xbox game price hikes.
Technologies
iOS 26: AI Summaries Come Back to iPhone News Apps, but With a Warning
Apple initially disabled these summaries in January.

Apple released iOS 26 on Monday, a few months after the company announced it at the June Worldwide Developers Conference. The update brings a new Liquid Glass redesign, call screening and hidden features to your iPhone. The update also brings AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps back to Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone.
Apple disabled AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in January. That came a few weeks after the BBC pointed out in December that the feature twisted the media organization’s notifications and displayed inaccurate information.
Here’s what to know about those AI summaries and the new warning.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
iOS 26 warns about summary inaccuracies
When I updated to iOS 26, I was greeted by some splash screens asking for various permissions. One splash screen was for the AI notification summaries. When you see this screen, you have two options: Choose Notifications to Summarize or Not Now. If you tap Not Now, the splash screen goes away.
If you tap Choose Notifications to Summarize, you’re taken to a new page where you’ll see three categories: News & Entertainment, Communication & Social and All Other Apps. Tapping one of these categories allows notification summaries for apps in that category. Beneath the News & Entertainment category, there’s a warning that gets outlined in red if you tap it.
«Summarization may change the meaning of the original headline,» the warning reads, adding, «Verify information.»
There’s also a warning across the bottom of the screen that reads, «This is a beta feature. Summaries may contain errors.»
After tapping the categories you want, tap Summarize Selected Notifications across the bottom of your screen. If you selected all the categories, this button will read Summarize All Notifications.
And if you don’t want these summaries, you can tap Do Not Summarize Notifications. If you allow these summaries and don’t like them, you can easily turn them off. Here’s how.
How to turn off AI notification summaries
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Notifications.
3. Tap Summarize Notifications.
4. Tap the Summarize Notifications toggle in the new menu.
You can also follow the above steps to turn AI notification summaries back on. You’ll have to select which categories you want these summaries for again, too.
For more on iOS 26, here’s my review of the OS, how to reduce the Liquid Glass effects in the update and how to enable call screening on your iPhone. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.
Technologies
Amazon Prime Is Ending Shared Free Shipping. What to Know and When It Happens
How Prime Invitee program’s end could affect your free deliveries.

If you’ve been using someone else’s Amazon Prime membership for free shipping, but you don’t live in the same house, you may need to pay another subscription fee soon. According to Amazon’s updated customer service page, the online retail giant is ending its Prime Invitee benefit-sharing program Oct. 1.
Amazon’s Prime Invitee program is being replaced by Amazon Family, as reported earlier by The Verge. It includes many of the same benefits, but Amazon Family only works for up to two adults and four children living in the same «primary residential address» — a shared home.
You’ll still be able to use free shipping to send gifts elsewhere, but your Prime Invitees will no longer be able to use the perk.
Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
Amazon isn’t the first company to prevent membership sharing between family and friends. The e-commerce giant is just the latest to follow Netflix’s account-sharing crackdown. While it’s unclear whether this change will work for Amazon, Netflix gained over 200,000 subscribers following its policy change. We also saw a similar account-sharing crackdown with Disney Plus and YouTube Premium.
Read more: More Than Just Free Shipping: Here Are 19 Underrated Amazon Prime Perks
What the Amazon Prime shipping crackdown means for you
If you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s Prime Invitee benefits, you have one more month to take advantage of the current program before the changes take effect.
Starting in October, you’ll have to get your own Amazon Prime subscription to benefit from the company’s free shipping program. First-time subscribers get a year of Prime membership for $15, but you’ll be stuck shelling out $15 a month to maintain your subscription thereafter.
Read more: Your Free Pass to Prime Day Deals (No Membership Required)
Why is Amazon ending the Prime Invitee program?
This move follows shortly after Reuters reported that Amazon’s Prime account signups slowed down recently despite an extended July Prime Day event. While the company reported blowout sales numbers, new Prime subscriptions didn’t meet internal expectations. In the US, they fell short of last year’s signup metrics.
According to Reuters, Amazon registered 5.4 million US signups over the 21-day run-up to the Prime Day event, around 116,000 fewer than during the same period in 2024, and 106,000 below the company’s own goal, a roughly 2% decline in both metrics.
By forcing separate households to have their own subscriptions, Amazon could be looking to attract more Prime accounts after previously failing to do so.
The new Amazon Family program (previously known as Amazon Household) offers Prime benefits to up to two adults and four children in a single home, including free shipping, Prime Video, Prime Reading and Amazon Music. The subscription also includes benefits for certain third-party companies, such as GrubHub.
Technologies
Pokemon TCG Pocket’s Pack Points System Needs an Overhaul Yesterday
The pack-opening pity points system is pitiful. There’s a very easy way to improve it.

Pokemon TCG Pocket is more than a mobile game: It’s a money-making machine. The virtual trading card app raked in more than $900 million in its first six months, eclipsing even Pokemon Go’s revenue in the same post-release time span. As it turns out, fake Pokemon cards are just as much of a hot commodity as the real thing.
People love ripping open card packs, hunting down ones with their favorite illustrations of fan-favorite Pokemon. It feels great to beat the odds by pulling an elaborately-inked full art or a shiny secret rare. But it really starts to irk me when I’m missing only one or two cards from a set and I can’t get lucky enough to pull them out of a pack.
Pokemon TCG Pocket has a «pity points» system that’s supposed to make this feel less terrible: Every time you open a pack, you earn five pack points, which you can directly trade in for a card of your choosing.
You can trade in 35 points for a common card, but if you want to get the rarest cards from a set, they could eat up 500 points, 1,250 points or even a whopping 2,500 points each. That means you’d have to rip open 500 card packs in order to earn a single copy of one of Pokemon TCG Pocket’s rarest cards.
It sounds absurd (and it is), but that’s to be expected for a free-to-play game, especially one where the developer makes money by encouraging players to pay for extra card pulls. My real big issue with pack points is that they’re restricted to the expansion set you earned them in.
For example, I have 210 pack points for the latest card set, Secluded Springs, and I’ve been exclusively pulling those packs since it was released. I also have 700 pack points for the game’s first-ever expansion Genetic Apex — but those points are locked to Genetic Apex, and can’t be used for any other set. I’ve accrued hundreds of pack points, but they’re essentially useless to me because they won’t help me complete the sets I’m still missing cards in.
Pokemon TCG Pocket expansion sets are released on a monthly basis, which means no one really has time to earn enough pack points for a rare card before the next shiny slate of cards is dangled in front of your eyes. It propagates a desperate sense of FOMO that I’ve criticized in the past, but there’s a simple solution that would make the problem disappear overnight.
Instead of locking pack points to any one set, they should be an account-wide currency instead. Every time you earn pack points, they should be added to one large pool that you can use on any of the in-game card sets. That way, players wouldn’t have to feel a manufactured sense of guilt for ripping open packs from older sets.
While it’s customary for gacha games to have a pity system that guarantees a certain reward after a certain amount of pulls, it’s by no means a requirement for these games to have these systems. In a sense, I’m grateful that the pack points exist in Pokemon TCG Pocket in the first place.
I think we should always argue for a more consumer-friendly experience in modern gaming. Overhauling the pity system so that pack points can be used universally across all of the in-game card sets will make the game fairer and give more players a real chance to get the rarest cards.
It creates a greater sense of parity between free-to-play and paying players, and it might even cause some people to spend more money on pack openings to boot. Universal pack points are a win-win for players and DeNA alike.
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